Want higher quality live audio? If you want it done right...

Concert taping is at least forty years old—the First Free Underground Grateful Dead Tape Exchange formed in the early 1970s after all. It was an informal network of Deadheads willing to share tapes with each other in person or via mail, some described it as the original Napster. Les Kippel remembered smuggling in extra batteries, tapes, and microphones so he could capture an entire evening. He started out with a Japanese portable tape machine but insisted the real quality recordings didn't come until '74, when Sony came out with the 152 and the ECM-99 stereo microphones.

Today, firsthand concert audio can be accessed much easier. It's among the first results on any YouTube song search, venue partnerships exist such as NPR's "Live In Concert" series, and you can always find modern incarnations of the tape exchange (like the popular NYCTaper.com).

"As long as we've been a band, we’ve had a good relationship with tapers," said Jason Cohen, keyboardist for blues outfit, The Ryan Montbleau Band. "We've always tried to get good, quality recordings out there. But what’s out there tended to be a pair of mics at the back of the room and it didn’t sound that great. So we wanted control."

Recently, the band started touring with a digital mixing console to create live recordings they'd sell via USBs (320kbps MP3 fortmat) while on tour. "A friend bought one and showed it to me. '1998 called and they want their technology back,'" Cohen said. "We had a talk—we knew some bands who were doing live audio streaming through UStream, but their results weren’t the best. I thought in this age if we have an idea, you can Google until you find a way to do it."

That’s exactly what Cohen and company did. Taking the band's digital mixing console, an Avid Venue SC48, Cohen and the band's sound engineer set out to find a way to use this technology for livestreaming. The tinkering went down during a 12-hour experimenting session in New Hampshire last summer. The mixing console came with Pro Tools LE8, so they started there. But Cohen quickly recognized it wasn't going to work within this plan (try bouncing to MP3 quickly enough for a live feed). While fiddling with Logic, he noticed the program could recognize the SC48; the device's drive made it possible for other audio programs to access it.

Eventually for the quick recording purposes, the band settled on Audio Hijack Pro from Rogue Amoeba—a program designed to create high quality recordings from the Web or off an app like Skype. It too recognized the SC48 as an input. Cohen purchased a few Waves plug-ins (studio quality tools like multi-band compresser C4 and maximizer L2) to improve the final audio mix. The music was finally available at a speed that could translate live and a quality the band was comfortable with. All they needed next was a way to broadcast it out.

Rogue Amoeba happened to provide a solid option called Nicecast, allowing Cohen to create an online radio station to broadcast shows and replay past recordings during off hours. It took a little tinkering—Cohen even reached out to the company and received a response from the CEO; he had never seen this combo used before. But Nicecast recognized Audio Hijack as an input option and the resulting project now feeds RMBLive.com each night the band performs.

With a theoretical process in place, the band began the stream during shows in January. "WiFi was a big issue at first," said Cohen. "During soundcheck that first night we streamed it as a test. The house WiFi got overloaded and just completely shut down. Since then we’ve made a couple of groundrules for the streaming, because we need reliability. One bad experience with it and fans won’t come back."

The band's guidelines? House WiFi needs to be a secure network for starters. As soon as they get things running on it, Cohen will upload 6 to 7 GB of home movies just to see how the network will handle a transfer of that size.

But the Ryan Montbleau band doesn't get to play venues like Madison Square Garden every night (upcoming dates include: Sterling, New York and Pawtucket, Rhode Island), so Cohen wanted a backup plan to keep the streams coming. The band can now work off tethered WiFi from one of two jailbroken iPhones, giving them access to the stream as long as either AT&T or Verizon 3G is available.

Currently, it’s just an audio stream. The band has a server in upstate New York and they set up a large buffer on the server side to ensure functionality (the delay is anywhere from 20 to 25 seconds. Cohen will even go check it whenever Montbleau decides to perform a few solo songs during a set). But there's internal discussion about continually evolving their live show Web presence. They're experimenting with adding live images to RMBLive.com that the band or select fans could upload immediately. They have a chatroom they've toyed with for potential uses like having fans vote on song selections (Cohen can be found in there interacting with fans on any given night), though they're wary of letting an online experience dictate what happens at the physical show.

Ultimately though, the band would love to provide a full performance experience to fans who want access anywhere. "We're interested in video but bandwidth is the biggest issue," said Cohen. "We can't do it through an iPhone tether at this point. Coachella just did this amazing series of YouTube live streams, and for a stream to be worthwhile it needs to be approaching that quality."

For bands looking to follow in their footsteps, Cohen said it's possible but you need to plan it out in advance. The Ryan Montbleau band travels with their own equipment (including the live audio tools) and they're lucky to have a dedicated front of house sound engineer savvy enough to handle it. Bands that have to deal with venue variables (using the house sound guy, relying on local WiFi, etc.) could easily run into trouble. Plus to get the equipment capable of producing audio at this level, things get expensive: the plug-ins can reach $1,000 and the digital mixer will run more than 25 times that. Sadly, none of those concerns includes potential rights issues (such as other parties who may want to sell the audio or venue partnerships with other streamers). The Ryan Montbleau Band still operates as an independent outfit.

The Ryan Montbleau Band's next set of shows begins on May 25 in Buffalo, New York and currently includes dates through the end of July. Fans can listen in during any night of the tour through RMBLive.com.

9 Reader Comments

A couple years ago taper420 (http://www.taper420.com/) streamed some excellent quality Phish shows nearly live via his laptop, set of mics, and "array of different techniques" to gain Internet access at the venue (http://onlinephishtour.com/2011/03/07/t ... -taper420/). As venues get better and better at this they'll definitely try to shut it down, but it's going to be tough (and jambands will always let their fans tape the shows, just not necessarily stream them in real time).

He pledged not to stream any shows that weren't sold out and kept his word, but most shows were sold out (and the soundboard is available the next day anyway).

I've done a lot of official live recording over the past decade- stereo board feed with room mics, multitracked, mostly clubs and smaller theatres, but every once in a while a larger concert hall. Back in the old days it was great fun and I encountered nothing but enthusiasm and cooperation. Recently, however, the tides have turned.

Often times it's the venue's management that won't allow me to record. Even if I have the band's permission, even if the recording will in no way be made publicly available. Even if I'm in the band.

Naming names- I worked for weeks and finally had an agreement with all the bands playing a show at The Echoplex in LA recently. Lots of emailing and phone calls to get everybody on board. When I got to the venue, they (The Echoplex) wouldn't allow me to record unless I paid them $250 in advance.

I used to be able to record at The Troubadour, but they've got a similar deal now. Same thing with The Knitting Factory before they closed a few years ago. I used to have no problem at Spaceland/Satellite until a few years ago when they put an end to the bands recording themselves, because they've got some in-house recording system and they keep all the recordings for themselves to potentially be released through their own boutique record label.

I hope Ryan Montbleau won't run into the same sort of unfavorable policies (maybe it's just a west coast thing?) in trying to stream his shows. It just seems like more and more venues think there's some 'piece of the action' to get, and simply won't accept that there's no real money in such a venture.

Every once in a while, the artist that I've recorded will put up the recording as a 'pay what you want' offering on Bandcamp. But really, nobody's making any money from these things. But the venues don't care. They only see the perceived value and want to make a quick buck.

This is an interesting concept that is executed using a convenient approach. However, I'd argue that streaming 128K is pretty lame.It would make far more sense to use a portable hotspot (which tend to have far better throughput than a phone) to do the streaming or increase the time delay to allow a larger portion to upload to the server, allowing for a higher bit rate.

I am new to sound reinforcement, a self-study hobbyist with no field experience, so take the following with a grain of salt:

This article missed an opportunity to provide guidance whilst reporting about the band's difficulties. It seems to me that the band has spent more money to get less functionality, and the article does nothing to address that line of thinking. I would've liked to have seen some exploration of why: the band uses such an expensive mixer, the band uses those particular plugins, and why they chose the streaming solution they did. Ars isn't an audio production site, but I/O management and network architecture are common themes (let alone the software workflow).

Lacking a larger context for the difficulties RMB faced, this article is more discouraging than enlightening.

Copy-editor's Perspective:

The author's used of "USBs" is just plain wrong: "USB" is either a proper noun or an adjective, not a common noun which can be pluralized.

I would've liked to have seen some exploration of why: the band uses such an expensive mixer, the band uses those particular plugins, and why they chose the streaming solution they did. Ars isn't an audio production site, but I/O management and network architecture are common themes (let alone the software workflow).

I would imagine to have the ability to do one mix as the live mix, and the other as the one to be streamed/sold. A direct sound board recording sounds WAY different than the mixd does in the room, as the room mix is done for, well, the room. Having a separate mix allows them to optimize it for standard listening situations (headphones, home stereos). This is why many soundboard recordings don't sound as good as the live show, as the show is mixed for the venue, not headphones.

As for the plugins, they help with the issues of the show being mixed for the venue. I would guess they are running two mixes: one for the house, the other for the recording. I could be wrong and they are just putting the plugins on the master bus, but I would highly doubt it in this case. Most of the Waves plugins are top notch, and are used on a vast majority of records these days. Glad to see them paying attention to detail throughout the signal chain.

I love bands who encourage taping. It certainly helped the Greatful Dead, Dave Matthews, and many other artists out there. I personally keep a detailed, liberal taping policy on my site. I don't allow direct, unmixed soundboard recordings for the reason mentioned above, though heavily encourage venue recordings. When we put something out for the fans, it will often have the soundboard mixed in as well, but never without room mics.

Definitely found this an interesting read, as we are currently looking into doing live streams of our shows and as soon as we can, move into the video realm. The venue issues are definitely the most frustrating, and while I suppose a MiFi could be used, video would still be out of the question, and even the cost of just sending audio would be insane.

I would imagine to have the ability to do one mix as the live mix, and the other as the one to be streamed/sold. A direct sound board recording sounds WAY different than the mixd does in the room, as the room mix is done for, well, the room. Having a separate mix allows them to optimize it for standard listening situations (headphones, home stereos). This is why many soundboard recordings don't sound as good as the live show, as the show is mixed for the venue, not headphones.

As for the plugins, they help with the issues of the show being mixed for the venue. I would guess they are running two mixes: one for the house, the other for the recording. I could be wrong and they are just putting the plugins on the master bus, but I would highly doubt it in this case. Most of the Waves plugins are top notch, and are used on a vast majority of records these days. Glad to see them paying attention to detail throughout the signal chain.

I know that why they use a mixer with much I/O (especially AUX), but that doesn't address why they use that particular mixer. The situation with the Waves plugins is similar. A mixer costing upwards of $$20,000 isn't strictly necessary for this function, neither are costly plugins (some DAWs, such as Studio One, come with quite capable plugins). A brief explanation of what they use and to what extent, as well as more affordable options for those who don't need quite the same amount of I/O, would've gone a long way to establishing "you too can do this, and it might be much more affordable for your situation that it is for RMB's."

Glad to see these guys getting some press; good music and a bunch a of cool guys. My wife and I hung out with them a bit on Jamcruise in 2009.

There is tons of great live streams out there now; some sound decent and some like utter shit. It is free though so you can't really complain too much--and if you want to complain, fucking do it better yourself!

This sounds great, I have some nice recordings of these guys and am looking forward to seeing how the streams sound.I have been an avid collector of live music, even own a website just for the purpose of trading live music. I too hope that they do not have to many issues with venues. It IS becoming harder to tape live performances.Remember support these bands, go see the show, buy their music and merchandise, allow them to be independant!!